Congress Must Let the FCC Do Its Job and Protect the Privacy of Internet Users
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Education convened a hearing to discuss the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rulemaking on “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services.”
The proposed rules build on the FCC’s 2015 decision to reclassify broadband access as a telecom service under Title II of the Communications Act, recognizing that internet service providers have statutory obligations to protect their customers’ privacy and obtain their consent before selling, sharing or misusing their personal information.
Four out of five witnesses at today’s congressional hearing represent the phone and cable industries and opposed the FCC’s proposal, arguing for weaker privacy enforcement and reliance on internet access providers’ own privacy promises. Professor Paul Ohm of the Georgetown University Law Center and Senate Democrats generally defended the FCC’s proposal and supported consumers’ right to control how their personal information is used.
Last week, Free Press submitted a filing to the FCC arguing that access providers, as common carriers, must follow a straightforward congressional mandate to protect privacy. Section 222 and Title II of the Communications Act determine that these providers “have no business interfering with their customers’ network traffic nor monitoring that traffic and commercializing it without their customers’ consent.”
Free Press Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia made the following statement:
“Having acted decisively to protect essential common-carriage principles, the FCC is now simply following the congressional directive under Section 222 to safeguard the privacy of broadband customers of companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. The Commission must follow through on this statutory mandate, and it must do so without delay.
“Access providers can exploit their bottleneck position to collect nearly every detail about who we talk to, what we do and say online, and — thanks to location tracking — where we do it. Without the protections the FCC is proposing, even the savviest consumers would be unable to fully protect their online privacy from prying eyes. These companies shouldn’t misuse a customer’s personal information in any way or sell it without first seeking that person’s consent.
“The FCC should be confident in the knowledge that it’s exercising its lawful authority to protect consumers and the open internet. Members of Congress who oppose this common-sense proposal should get out of the way. They need to recognize that the agency is doing the job the law lays out for it on behalf of the American public.”
